Tag: international enrolment

International students: UK must make hay while the sun shines

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece  First printed in University World News 18 September 2021

Champagne glasses were raised at the PIEoneer Awards in London’s Guildhall on 3 September, a sparkling event where many higher education colleagues were able to mingle face to face in the United Kingdom for the first time in almost two years. The event was directly followed by the release of the Universities UK International (UUKi) and IDP Connect paper, “International Student Recruitment: Why aren’t we second? Part 2”.

This was not meant to throw a damp blanket over the celebrations but was rather a dose of reality as hangovers subsided. In truth, the reality is that the UK is probably already second, given that one of their main competitors, Australia, is on the ropes and the paper does not criticise a lack of ambition in the government’s plan to attract 600,000 international students by 2030. It is time for the sector to be more ambitious and answer the question: How and where can we be first?

Despite the challenges of this year, UK higher education has emerged from the global pandemic largely unscathed in contrast to the competition. International student numbers were challenged in 2020-21, but applications and acceptance data from UCAS is hard proof that the UK in 2021 is an attractive and welcoming destination for international students. Despite political tensions, the UK’s relationship with China seems to have weathered the storm, something which cannot be said for Australia, Canada or the United States.

The UK is the leading destination for Chinese students this year and that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. An Education International Cooperation Group survey found, for the third consecutive year, that the UK achieved favoured status – something previously held by the United States. Nearly 30% of students preferred Britain, 24.5% favoured the US and 16.5% chose Australia, with Canada 15.8% coming in fourth.

There’s further good news for the UK, with applications from India up 13% and we see a significant jump in applications from emerging markets – for example, Nigeria is up 83% and Pakistan is up 53%. When one considers deferrals from 2020-21 and record UK applications to university for this academic year, all in the garden looks rosy for UK institutions. Furthermore, when one looks at UK population data, the next nine years could see a record number of 18-year-olds looking to enter higher education.

There has, of course, been a dramatic fall of 57% in European Union enrolments in the UK following Brexit, due to the fact that EU students are now subject to international tuition fees. While reduced European numbers have hurt diversity and quality, we tend to concur with Nick Hillman at the Higher Education Policy Institute, who predicted way back in 2017 that Brexit would not be a disaster for UK universities. Hillman suggested that, in the medium to long term, UK universities are likely to benefit from increased revenue from European students paying the same international fees as their non-EU compatriots.

Universities will need as much international fee income as they can get their hands on to smooth any bumps in the road caused by the possible and, in our view likely, implementation of the proposal from the Philip Augar review of tertiary education funding that domestic tuition fees should be reduced to £7,500 (US$10,400). If this is the case, even if EU enrolment is reduced by 50%, EU students will be paying almost double the domestic tuition fees, which will compensate for the loss in numbers, if not diversity, on UK campuses.

Long-term challenges – and solutions

But the higher education sector would do well to heed the advice that first appeared in writing in John Heywood’s 1546 book on English proverbs – “make hay while the sun shines”.

By the time they get to 2030 the number of domestic 18-year-olds will begin to decline and, long before then, the Australians and New Zealanders will have fought back from their self-imposed exile. Anyone who remembers how the Aussies saw a decrease of more than 100,000 international enrolments from 2009 to 2012 won’t forget how they bounced back with an increase of 370,000 in the following seven years.

No doubt America will be back in the international game, having suffered from a declining domestic college-aged population and the hangover of the Donald Trump administration. We already see the beginnings of this. Kamala Harris’s recent trip to Southeast Asia indicates the pivotal role that the US sees ASEAN playing in future economic development and growth. One can also not bet against Canada, whose proactive education policies linked to migration will play a key role in international student mobility for the foreseeable future.

So, with resurgent international student enrolments and a runway of nine years until the boom in 18-year-old home students falls away, what should the UK be doing to establish and maintain a strategic advantage?

First, we need robust, representative, time-series data on international student outcomes. Most students will still return to their home country after study and it is a shocking indictment that the Higher Education Statistics Agency, Jisc and the Office for Students have been unwilling or unable to collect appropriate records.

Most students taking advantage of post-study work opportunities in the UK will also return home and the UUKi and IDP Connect research shows that post-study work can advantage them as they build their careers. Unfortunately, at the present time there is a total lack of insight as to how it advantages them, with no data on career outcomes and progression or the return on investment of a UK degree over an international graduate’s lifetime.

Second, the government needs to encourage and support the sector in building its soft power overseas. Global Britain should not be about a defensive island nation but about a new type of worldwide superpower that is linked with business and politics through smart graduates who recognise the quality of education they received.

Data again is the key. Government and institutions need to fully understand the strength of the UK international alumni network and utilise its links with industry to drive inward investment and international trade. The UK’s head start in transnational education offers a massive advantage if it exploits it effectively.

Thirdly, we need to throw off constraints and minimalist thinking. Make the target 750,000 international students and introduce the sound and sensible measures proposed by UUKi and IDP Connect, but also bring together establishment doyens and a new breed of innovative thinkers and actors – “a brains trust” that understands what it takes to be internationally ambitious.

Brexit was meant to be about taking back control rather than ceding ground and our universities offer the opportunity to launch global activities from a position of authority and excellence.

The late American writer and humourist Lewis Grizzard is credited with popularising the phrase: “Unless you’re the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” What the UK really needs to do is change the scenery through bold strategic action.

We should define metrics – the best graduate outcomes, the strongest transnational education, the fastest growth and others – which allow us to compare and benchmark our relative performance. But we should also strike out to be first in every market possible as well as at the top of comparable measures.

It is the first time in a decade that the UK has had this chance and the hay is there for the making.

Louise Nicol is founder of Asia Careers Group SDN BHD. Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge.

Image by pasja1000 from Pixabay 

There is more to student recruitment than edtechs offer

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece  First published in University World News 04 August 2021

We probably all remember the big reveal in The Wizard of Oz (recently in the news again) when Oscar Zoroaster is revealed as a conman who had used clever props and magic tricks to maintain his place as Supreme Ruler of the Kingdom of Oz. Universities might consider this when they hear industry pundits eulogising the power of the aggregators and the Emerald City of big data. The smartest of them know that there is a place for brains, heart and courage in finding alternative solutions to meet challenging international student recruitment targets during a global pandemic.

It’s no surprise that, to date, due to lockdowns and border closures, universities have felt powerless to make an impact on international recruitment. Stuck in their back bedrooms while working from home, aggregators must have seemed like the answer to their prayers for a quick technology fix to match their new-found obsession with Zoom. This thinking was supported by the suggestion that they were low cost, simplified agent relationships and could improve student accessibility.The glamour of eye-watering valuations and bold investments by venture capital and private equity cash looking to ride the latest edtech wave seems very persuasive.

There is slick marketing, even slicker websites and the ubiquitous use of the word algorithm to confirm that artificial intelligence and machine learning can solve all problems. Anyone blinded by the hype could be easily persuaded to “follow the yellow brick road” and commit the lion’s share of next year’s recruitment budget to the Wizard.

Blinded by algorithms

But, before budgets are committed and valuable university brands handed over, it is worth taking a step back, looking behind the curtain and considering the future in a more measured way. Dorothy trusted the Wizard and did battle with a Wicked Witch on his behalf before finding he wasn’t all he appeared to be. He wasn’t evil, but it turned out that her first impressions were wrong and her true friends were really the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion.

In the case of the aggregators, those that have joined early are likely to see the best returns on their initial investment because the aggregators’ client lists remain manageable and the choices for students limited. As more universities pile in, convinced by the returns of those that have gone before them, those that have brands with limited reach or are less able to pay for placement and influence are likely to sink to the bottom. As aggregators gain clients, their revenues will grow while returns for institutions are likely to diminish over time.

Relying on an algorithm to place you in front of a student is all well and good but, just as has become accepted with Google searches, it only works out if you are on page one and preferably between one and three on the list. Showing how manipulated this can be can be seen in recent research on Studyportals where a search gave 839 courses on their ‘Our Picks’ list, with the first 10 being the University of Lincoln and the top 253 shown as ‘Featured’, indicating that they had paid to be near the top. It is debatable whether this method works in the interests of the student or the paying university.

That’s why, despite all the hype around aggregators, 46% of universities polled in a recent UK Education Advisory Service survey have not taken the plunge. They will be looking at the options and ways in which they can manage their risk while optimising any benefits that the new technology can bring. We return to Dorothy on her journey through Oz to suggest some valuable allies that might form part of a comprehensive strategy.

The Scarecrow is a model for having the brains to develop strategic thinking. Any university putting together their international recruitment strategy for next year should consider this checklist:

• Aggregators. Negotiate hard for the best deal. It is all about market share and brand for them, so they want you more than you think.
• Review direct recruitment. If you get it right, it can dramatically lower your cost of sale by building strategic relationships with international schools in target markets. Look beyond ‘Tier One’ schools which may have high numbers of expatriates who may want home fee status to ‘Tier Two’ schools to attract more international students.
• Think aggressively about meaningful engagement. Nobody needs another talk on “filling out a UCAS form” or “writing a personal statement”. Involve academic colleagues, set challenges and remember to personalise ongoing contact with schools and individual students after a first presentation.
• Get a handle on social media, networkers and influencers. Just one example is to join prospective international student groups in your target markets and search for your university name and respond to the various comments and requests for advice and guidance.
• Look to your TNE partners. They can be a route for progression, but may also add value in other ways. Examples include careers advice supporting students returning to the region or using existing employer relationships to create new revenue streams for Continuing Professional Development and-or applied research.
• Put international employability at the heart of your messaging. It is the reason students, and their parents, invest in international education. Ensure your institution has access to top graduate destinations by key international markets. Get robust, representative data to demonstrate graduate outcomes and be able to tell your ‘employability story’. Whether it’s through direct recruitment, pathways, aggregators or agents, a student’s decision will directly be influenced by their ability to get a good job and be able to progress in their career.

The Tin Man reminds us to have a heart. Do not be lured by the aggregators into abandoning pre-existing and new relationships with agents, institutions, schools and key overseas stakeholders. As the list of those on aggregator sites become longer, it is the personal touch that will end up paying dividends when it comes to recruitment.

Visiting agents’ offices, international schools and speaking to prospective students will never be a waste of time, and that personal touch is likely to be a far stronger incentive for a student to apply than their scrolling through a long list of possible study options.

Where the Lion comes in is in emphasising that universities need courage to make strategic decisions that they will stick with.

That means seeing past the possible short-term bump in recruitment that aggregators will claim and remaining focused on a game plan that both mitigates risk and builds flexible, scalable and meaningful engagement with students now and in the future. Aggregators may be a part of that strategy, but they are unlikely to be the only option or always the best solution.

Some will survive and others will fall by the wayside like the Wicked Witches of the East and the West. They will not own the student recruitment ecosystem unless universities let them.

Louise Nicol is founder of Asia Careers Group SDN BHD, and Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge.

Image by Please Don’t sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay 

RANK HYPOCRISY

Shock and horror as the THE World Top Ten Universities 2022 are revealed as….exactly the same ten names as 2021.  A small shuffle of the deck saw Stanford drop from second to fourth but The Stanford Daily seemed more concerned with the question Who Is Elizabeth Holmes, The Stanford Dropout Now on Trial?  As someone probably once said – if you’re truly world class you don’t say it and you certainly don’t need the THE to tell you.

LinkedIn was full of university marketing chiefs and even some academics, who should probably know better, trumpeting their performance.  Newcastle University’s marketers expressed pride that it had moved into the top 150 but it had simply returned to 146th – exactly the position it occupied in the 2011-12 rankings. There were plenty of other institutions with short term memories talking without any regard for whether their ranking meant real, sustainable or even meaningful progress.

It’s a merry go round that was called out recently by Vincenzo Raimo who noted that universities tend to celebrate advances but complain about the distortion and negative impact of the rankings. When leading academics do call into questions the methodology, as David Price, UCL’s Vice Provost of Research did recently, they get snide responses from the promoter in chief.  Perhaps the THE is becoming The Borg and thinks that “resistance is futile”.   

What the THE has certainly seen is that university compliance and hypocrisy has enabled them to exploit the “trusted rankings” as a platform for THE Student.   To the mix they add a spiel about “hand-picked partners” who will help student “make the right choices”.  A cynic might suggest that the many privately financed partners on the list are much more likely to ensure a result which is in their own interests. 

But It May Be Worse Than That

It would seem harmless to simply accept that the World Rankings have become a university version of the Sunday Times Rich List where envious glances are occasionally followed by spectacular falls from grace.  Maybe The Stanford Daily is offering a metaphor by focusing on a cautionary tale of hubris and deceit just as these rankings were published.  But the THE doesn’t appear to be in any doubt about the game it is playing.

They say that “even if you do not meet the inclusion criteria, you will be entitled to a university profile on our website that will increase your visibility to our audience of academics, prospective students and their parents.”  It is a university version from the “Toxic Sludge is Good for You” playbook which Publisher’s Weekly called “a cautionary reminder that much of the consumer and political world is created by for-hire mouthpieces in expensive neckties.”.  Even the most limited institution, regardless of reputation or quality, can benefit from reflected glory as part of this commercial enterprise.

The THE sells the benefits of the rankings very hard and articulates them as global exposure with tens of millions of page views, data trusted by governments and universities, and a vital resource for students when they are making decisions about where to study. The point about ‘trusted by governments’ is a big part of the sales patter including a recent Tweet which highlighted the EU Commission’s, Gerard de Graaf saying,  “We know that rankings do more to direct universities’ attention, policy makers’ attention, students’ attention than any other policy tool… “. 

Surprising then that in 2014, the very same year of de Graaf’s comments, the European Commission gave €2m funding to establish U-Multirank explicitly, “to avoid simplistic league tables which can result in misleading comparisons between institutions of very different types”.  Dr. Simon Marginson, Professor of International Higher Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College, London called U-Multirank, “a vital corrective to the “football” league mentality that has crept into higher education…”.  The point is that the EU did not see ‘rankings’ as the answer to anyone’s problems or need for better quality information.

Gaming The System

The tweet also claims that de Graaf “urged@timeshighered to develop rankings on impact” which they framed around the UN’s SDGs and first published in 2019.  To be included in the overall ranking an institution has to self-select and submit data on SDG 17 and at least three other SDGs of its choice.  It’s difficult to see, however, that an institution can’t selectively manage its performance in three SDGs and SDG 17 while being a mediocre or even poor actor in the other thirteen.

The University of Manchester’s top spot in the 2021 Impact Rankings suggests how partial this process can be and why students looking for insights might do well to look elsewhere.  An alternative might be the  People and Planet UK-based student network that has been running an environmental and ethical performance league tables since 2007.  The organisation also does useful things like training and mentoring young people, campaigning and challenging vested interests locally and internationally.

Its 2019 League Table gave the University of Manchester a low-ranking in the Upper Second-Class Honours bracket and 59th in the UK.  To be totally fair it also notes that the University has fully completed a commitment to divest from all fossil fuels.  It is arguable that the THE rankings give too much opportunity for institutions to game the system and, as a Professor of History in a 5* department once said to me, “we are all here because we are good at passing tests”.          

If the principle is that the THE Impact Rankings are a “vital resource” for students wanting to make a choice they might do well to consider giving a broader context.  Students travel internationally to share in a cultural experience and could easily find that selecting a university based on the Impact rankings leads them to places where the off-campus setting is a little less in tune with their sensibilities.  It’s not necessarily that the universities aren’t trying hard but there are very real limits to their power.

The country with the largest representation in the Impact rankings is Russia with 75 institutions which seems counter-intuitive given that the country is only 46 of 165 in the UN’s own SDG rankings.  In early 2020 Transparency International ranked the country 137th out of 180 in its Corruption Perceptions Index at a point when the Russian Academy of Sciences was reported as finding “widespread plagiarism in Russian academic journals, with more than 850 articles rescinded from 263 journals after an initial review.”  More concerning is the repression, sexual harassment and intimidation of students and faculty outlined by the Russian student magazine DOXA.

At 27 in the Impact rankings is Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Saudi Arabia – a country down at 98 in the UN rankings.  The university scores well on SDG 10 for reducing inequalities at a point when the UN does not appear to have information available to give the country a score.  Meanwhile Finland, which is top of the UN league table, doesn’t have a university ranked until the 201-300 bracket by the THE.

When Gaming Becomes Cheating

League table manipulation is a theme that Malcolm Gladwell picked up in his Revisionist History podcast series.  Calling the U.S. News & World Report college rankings an “abomination” might sound harsh but his analysis points to the way the rankings can distort perceptions of higher education.  The edition on Project Dillard focuses on the specifics of how a historically black university in New Orleans is disadvantaged “even though, on a number of very objective measures, it does an outstanding job of educating the students who go there.”

His argument is that, fundamentally, the league table gives no encouragement for small and rich colleges to use their advantaged position to serve larger numbers of students.  The corollary is that Dillard University could leap sixty places up the US News rankings by cutting 75% of its students.  All of this is before the various scandals of colleges manipulating data to improve their place in the US News rankings.

In this vein the THE Impact rankings have a corrections page where any errors in data collection and changes to rank as a result are listed.  The notable thing about this is that every case where incorrect or incomplete data was submitted the university’s ranking has either not changed or they have gone up the table.  It’s a relatively small sample but one might imagine that institutions are keen to, legitimately, correct the data when they feel they have done poorly but less likely to review data when rankings have gone well.    

Earlier this year a report by the Center for Studies in Higher Education produced an analysis suggesting the QS World Rankings had a conflict of interest due to its consulting business.  QS responded that the consulting contract with the university stipulated that there was no link to rankings and that they had policies to ensure staff were “free from personal or commercial bias”. Readers will make up their own minds but as league tables become increasingly commercially exploited the risks becomes greater.

If Resistance Is Futile…Consider Changing the Rules

Nobody should kid themself that league tables have not had a material impact on decision making within universities.  Hours, days and weeks of planning and strategy have been exhausted on understanding the levers that can be pulled to move institutions up various rankings and this effort would not be made unless it fed into actions.  The available tools are relatively blunt but increasing the number of ‘good degrees’ always looked manipulable and it is arguable that the 90% growth in first class degrees awarded in the UK between 2010/11 and 2018/19 is one visible sign of that pressure.

But Forbes tells us some interesting things about “no win scenarios and ethical leadership” and draws on Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru scenario as its exemplar.  Famously, Captain James T. Kirk overcame the no-win training scenario by reprogramming the simulation and has led a fierce debate over whether he cheated or was simply creative.  Author Janet D. Stemwedel cuts through this by suggesting “it’s important to be able to deal with trying to live up to our ethical obligations while knowing full well that circumstances and our own limitation cannot guarantee we’ll succeed.”

University league tables won’t go away and universities may feel obliged to play the game because of the political, social and recruitment leverage they might offer.  However, academics do not have to join in by offering their opinions about other universities and institutions do not need to manipulate their decision making with one eye on the league table impact.  There could also be more concerted pushback against the dumbing down that emphasizes overall rankings and oases of excellence in a sea of mediocrity or even corruption. If the aim is to help students faced with the biggest decision of their lives it’s worth the effort.

Notes

The complexity of league table methodology is the stuff of legend but it does not really aid understanding. The commentary on the THE approach to the overall SDG table reflects my understanding of the paragraph – A university’s final score in the overall table is calculated by combining its score in SDG 17 with its top three scores out of the remaining 16 SDGs. SDG 17 accounts for 22 per cent of the overall score, while the other SDGs each carry a weight of 26 per cent. This means that different universities are scored based on a different set of SDGs, depending on their focus.

As always I am happy to review authoritative comment which may aid understanding and will reflect this in an update if necessary.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Go compare – the emerging threat to higher education

Louise Nicol and Alan Preece  First published in University World News on 22 May 2021

Commodification is increasingly likely to be a word that universities need to recognise, understand and apply to their business planning as technology levels the playing field for international student recruitment.

Investopedia tells us that it means ‘a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type’. When you put it alongside Clayton Christensen’s ‘jobs to be done’ and the growing availability of university comparison or application sites, it’s easy to see emerging comparisons with the marketplace for car insurance.

The point about the ‘jobs to be done’ approach is that it highlights that the purpose of buying a particular good or service is to ‘make progress in specific circumstances’. For most international students (and increasingly home students) the purpose of getting a degree is to get a job and to have decent career prospects.

Higher education may want students to study for love of a subject, but the harsh reality for a generation that is poorer than its parents is that this does not seem to be leading to what they need.

A world where outcome is all that counts

A 2013 report by Oliver Wyman shows that, in the United Kingdom, price comparison websites (PCWs) were securing 60% of new motor insurance policies after starting up just a decade before. It suggests that many people were content to make their purchasing decision in this way rather than studiously interrogate the terms and conditions of every company individually.

There is no doubt that the ability to consider price alongside any other factors was vital in the rise of such sites. Moreover, the report found that the reality was that many of the insurance products were virtually indistinguishable.

Choosing a university may not be exactly the same as choosing car insurance, but aggregator sites could present dozens of business and finance courses that all end with a degree from an institution.

In the case of the UK these are accredited by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). The QAA Quality Mark or Review Graphic shows that the provider has “met or exceeded the UK expectations for quality and standards in their QAA review”. In principle, every UK university with this seal of approval has degrees with equal status, but they offer them at significantly different prices.

The great and the good of higher education may be shaking their heads at this and thinking of Lord Darlington’s quote from Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windemere’s Fan about ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’. But, in a situation where the customer has access to alternatives at the touch of a button, they have the means to determine the price they are willing to pay for the outcome they want.

Lord Darlington’s remark was about the nature of a cynic and it is arguable that young people are increasingly sceptical about the value of higher education.

Price, grades and rankings as differentiators

Institutions will undoubtedly look for ways of distinguishing themselves, but there are very few that have the financial muscle or marketing wit to be able to do so on a global scale.

It was not unknown before the internet for lowly institutions to inflate the tuition fees of their courses to international students on the basis that ‘price is a proxy for quality’. Better accessibility to information and ubiquitous university rankings have put a halt to that ploy so there will be a need for different tactics.

Entry qualifications, which are often seen as a signal of a quality institution, could become a way of communicating quality. But it has become clear that, with the number of universities going SATs free in the United States and the propensity for UK universities to be very flexible with international students, this is shaky ground.

It’s made even more complex by pathway operations that will offer international students a route to entry based on getting the required language level and passing the pathway’s own academic tests.

It would also seem counterproductive for most institutions to try to distinguish themselves by having high tariff entry points on a comparison site. Student matching may be sophisticated, but there is limited scope for nuance about such a defining piece of information and losing volume is not something that most institutions can afford to do.

Trying to impress with output grades is an equally risky business given the potential for grade inflation and the ability of institutions to decide how many of their students get ‘good degrees’.

University ranking may offer a different sort of quality test for students and, whether you love them or hate them, they have become a popular measure of distinction. However, research from the 2020 QS International Student Survey, recently presented at the Universities UK International Higher Education Forum, showed that there is a significant mismatch between the way rankings are compiled and the perceptions of students.

Prospective international students were asked to rank, in order of importance, what they thought a university’s good ranking indicated about the institution.

The top result was that 72% believe graduate employment rate is the most important factor. This was even above the 69% mark for the qualification level of staff members at the institution and 64% for student satisfaction. How a university is perceived by employers was deemed important by 49%, above the 48% for the number of citations in academic journals.

In short, students believed that employment outcomes and employer views were more important than staff quality, student satisfaction and research publications.

Price, ranking and employability

In that context it is disappointing that no current rankings include international student graduate employment as an input.

Within the QS World University Rankings, “employer reputation”, which is not the same as graduate employment rate but could provide some indication, accounts for just 10% of the measure. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 methodology did not include any element related to international employability or graduate outcomes.

Government-mandated graduate outcomes data collected in the majority of countries are usually only published with responses from domestic students. As the vast majority of international students – in the UK the estimate is 85% or more – still return to their home country, it would be inaccurate and misleading to use them as a guide to international student employability.

With rankings publishers forming partnerships with agents, aggregators and other interested parties to gain international student eyeballs, it is important for them to pay more attention to this important area.

International student graduate outcomes are being collected by private organisations and would bring real added value that is demonstrably aligned with the aspirations of students willing to invest to study abroad.

Without incorporating this key metric, the rankings will remain more of a vanity contest between institutions than a relevant and useful guide to applicants.

Price, ranking and international student employability are likely to become the key measures of a university’s value proposition when degree information is simple to compare and most institutions are obliged to engage with the aggregator sites.

Being a commodity product means a race to the bottom on price if that is where the institution chooses to compete.

Rankings are fickle, difficult to manage and leave the institution’s fate in the hands of publishers looking to satisfy their own ends. This is a good moment to really focus on providing the student customer with what they want and find ways to enhance value by proving that the institution provides a route to employability.

Alan Preece is an expert in global education, business transformation and operational management and runs the blogging site View from a Bridge and Louise Nicol is founder of Asia Careers Group SDN BHD.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Brass in Yocket for Aggregator Founders*

Having recently delved into ApplyBoard and Study Portals it was Yocket’s turn to go under the computer mouse.  Reportedly, started in 2012 with $136USD (less than £100GBP) the company claimed over $1m revenue in 2020 and a plan to get to over $10m in three years.  Various internet searches have not found references to other external funding in support of the company, so it looks like the founders are backing themselves. 

Described as a ‘one stop study abroad solution’ Yocket focuses on candidates from India and suggests it has registered more than 400,000 since 2015. The company name is a word play on the company being a ‘rocket’ for students to meet their aspiration.  It claims to have ‘tied-up’ with over 100 universities in the UK, US, Canada and Australia although the nature of the engagement and the split by country are not transparent.  Yocket is part of Avocation Education Services Private Limited (Avocation) which also owns Stupidsid** which was also started by the founders.

Yocket’s model would appear to be focused on being a ‘student aggregator’ making money by selling added value services rather than an ‘agent aggregator’ trying to attract recruitment agents. There is a clear attempt to build a revenue stream from universities but this appears to have had limited success with only 42 in the ‘Apply through Yocket’ list and limited institutional activity on the site. Before universities go rushing in to fill that void they may want to consider some features of the site and what their brand will be associated with.

Data Management and Use     

One of the emerging concerns about aggregator sites is their use of data and Yocket’s site demands an email as the price of doing any search and engages the user in giving more personal details at every opportunity.  An email, phone number and other details allows you to set up an account and “By creating an account you agree to Yocket’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.  Attempts to click on the links to read these take the user on a circular route back to the initial sign on page which may be a glitch but is unhelpful. 

However, the Privacy Policy is available through an internet search and is the same as that of Avocation in giving broad opportunities for the use of data, such as making it available to ‘third party service providers’ as well as to advertisers including financial services.  It notes that ‘Avocation Educational Services Private Limited’ reserves the right to update, change or modify this policy at any time.’  The Terms of Use can also be found and note that, “It cannot be guaranteed that the material, information, links, and content presented on and by this website is comprehensive, complete, accurate, sufficient, timely, or up to date for any particular purpose or use.” 

Given that students going to the site are expecting accurate and comprehensive information about any country that they hope to study in this seems problematic.  The information provides the basis for the potential student spending money on other services, such as Yocket Premium or finding a loan, so there should at least be some sense of responsibility.  As the test searches outlined below suggest, there is some way to go before the information available provides full confidence.

In Search of Substance 

A search for universities in the UK provided a list of 124 institutions – well short of the number of degree-awarding institutions in the country.  The opportunity to search by private universities only provided information on Ecole de Management de Normandie, Oxford and Arden University.  There was no mention at all of sector notables such as BPP and the University of Law (one of Arden’s siblings in the Global University Systems family).

Oddities in the UK public university listings included:

–  Northumbria (Amsterdam) listed as one of the three for the institution.                

–  Nottingham Trent, Aston and Birmingham each having two locations listed             

– University of Buckingham, a private university, appears in the list of public universities

The listing of each institution comprised a fuzzy photo of something that looks like a university with the university logo superimposed on top of it.  Adding to the general sense of low-resolution and compromise on detail is that 12 of the universities had no logo shown and 47 of the universities had no indicative tuition fee shown.  That might be a blessing for anyone interested in accuracy and quality of information.

There is a feature which allows a search by Low, Medium or High Price and this has several anomalies.  The most obvious shows Kings College London as having an international tuition fee of £9,250.  A fee of £20,790 for classroom based international undergraduate students appears to be the starting point at this venerable London institution. 

Thirty institutions are listed in the Medium price sector but only one makes it to be shown as High Price.  The University of Bristol occupies this category with a tuition fee that the site suggests is £72,000 when the university’s published undergraduate classroom based BSc is 20,100 and an MSc in Management at £26,500.

The low-priced list did not include the University of Chester which has a rate of £12,750 for international students which is lower than the £13,000 shown (correctly) for Teeside University. All of this suggests that AI or machine learning is being used to find information on university sites it needs some fine tuning. If it’s human research then the quality control needs to be stepped up. It’s currently misleading to students and potentially damaging to university recruitment hopes.

Going to North America

The search for top universities in the USA offered up 242 universities with Harvard, MIT and Stanford at the top but one for “popular universities” listed 659 with Northeastern, Texas A&M and University of Texas at Dallas at the top.  The first two are among those among the 42 listed on the Apply to Universities via Yocket page which suggests there may be a closer relationship between institution and aggregator.

Perhaps surprisingly given the world rankings, Canada has 194 ‘top universities’ listed which is exactly the same as the number shown as ‘popular’.   The University of British Columbia Vancouver and the University of Western Ontario are at the top of both lists but there is no description of how a university gets on one or the other list.  Neither university is on the 42 listed on the “Apply to Universities via Yocket” page.

Generally speaking, the pictures and the logos for the USA and Canada are in better shape than those for the UK.  The site also provides further counselling if you are “Confused about which country to pick?” but this requires upgrading to Yocket Premium.  The paucity of filters to offer comparisons make it difficult to make any sort of well-informed choice without taking that step.    

Clicking through to the university page from the search does give the added information about how many ‘Yocketers’ have applied and how many have been accepted as well as their average GRE quant score.  There’s also some information on scholarships available.  Just out of interest the claim is that 99 have applied to Harvard’s School of Engineering with 17 admitted and 222 have applied to MIT’s School of Engineering with 14 admitted.  Whether or not they chose to use Yocket’s other services or counselling is not made clear.

Further Insights

The application to universities service is currently limited to 42 institutions with only the universities of Wolverhampton, Sheffield, Huddersfield and Essex listed for the UK.  These universities do not appear to receive special treatment in other search facilities on the site and the nature of the relationship is unclear.  A 5 May 2020 blog post on the site in the Applying to Universities section indicates a session with University of Essex where participants may receive an “on the spot offer” depending on eligibility.

In answering the question Why Should I Choose Yocket?  the company says that it has “..been a helpful companion to 300,000+ study abroad aspirants since 2016. Through a powerful network of students and machine learning algorithms, yocket empowers you to make informed decisions to your educational pursuits.”  The critical question for many observers might be whether or not the platform and its current capabilities is enabling sufficient information for an informed decision.

An interesting feature and highly relevant given the power of peer-to-peer recommendations is the ‘Trending Yocketers’ section which allows direct connection to a candidate who is looking to study at a specific university.  This is supplemented by a Discussions thread where candidates can pose questions in the hope that a peer will respond. 

Yocket may be planning to upgrade the site in the near future. A blog on 27 April invites interest from users willing to participate in the Yocket Hydrogen Beta version.  It is described as “an upgraded platform that is better in design, experience and features”.  With the anticipated growth in India students travelling abroad to study this would seem a reasonable investment. 

Some Thoughts

Yocket’s story is well known and it has recently announced plans to recruit 300 more staff in 2021 and a further 1,000 over three years.  It has presented itself as enhancing student services in a disorganized market dominated by agents, where students were often misguided.  It is reasonable to believe that the development of an online service provides access to more people but this, in itself, does not mean that students are better advised or informed.

It is difficult to know how the information about universities is being gathered and the extent to which it is verified to allow reasonable comparisons.  Whether the other Yocket services – such as premium service at a reported £500 per student – gives well-founded counselling is also hard to know.  The company’s 7th Annual Virtual Meet Up in March 2021 claims to have gathered 40 universities from the US, UK, France and New Zealand and over 4,000 students, so the demand would seem to be there.

From the point of view of institutions news stories have indicated that universities can get directly involved for between $1,000 and $10,000 dollars.  This gets access to services that reach out to students in a growing market and may be tempting.  Institutions who choose to engage might consider learning how data is used and the terms under which additional services, particularly loans, are being offered.      

There are also questions about the levels of transparency, the comprehensiveness of coverage and the quality of information available.  For universities who have not given permission for their brands to be used it may be time to consider whether the format and presentation is acceptable and they should certainly check the details given about them.  Aggregators are using university names and logos as bait for students and then selling other services so it would be reasonable to take an assertive stance.

The overall impression is that Yocket started as a page allowing students to exchange information about universities and has become a business operating in one of the fastest growing student recruiting markets in the world.  The founders have commented extensively on their desire to ensure a more accessible and better organized service for students than they believe many recruitment agents have offered.  These are fine principles but operationalizing them probably requires more attention to detail than is currently evident on the site.  

NOTES

1.  *For those unfamiliar with popular music “Brass in Pocket” is a 1979 single by The Pretenders.   Apparently, lead singer Chrissie Hynde overheard someone enquiring if anyone had, “Picked up dry cleaning? Any brass in pocket?”  Brass is Northern English slang for money but is used idiomatically in several other ways including “brass neck” to mean showing a lot of nerve.

** Stupidsid.com started in February 2010 as a college review website with students’ opinions on colleges, courses and universities. It has developed to provide Study Resources (including solved question papers, university syllabuses and previous questions) and Knowledge Hub (claimed to be the “largest database of engineering-related information you’ll ever come across.”)

2. Searches were carried out on various browsers over the period from 13 to 17 May.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

Do Aggregators Match Up?

There’s significant interest in the higher education community about the rise of websites claiming to match students to degree programmes and what they might mean for student choice.  The websites and public comments of these aggregators are strong on claims about transparency, choice and putting the interests of students first.  This blog gets close and personal with a couple of websites of main players and gets granular enough to suggest that there might be room for improvement.

As a disclaimer I should note that, despite a philosophical preference for all education to be free, I appreciate the value that private investment can bring to expanding choice and opportunity.  If investors can employ people and make a return while offering good value to students, it seems to me to be an acceptable trade off.  I also have no reason to disbelieve the claim of aggregators that they aim to make global student choice easier and more accessible.

To ease the flow of the blog I have put a note of search terms used at the bottom of the text.  As with all research there is an element of subjectivity in my choices but they serve to explore some points about the way the system works. The two operators chosen reflect their scale and profile rather than any value judgement about their quality compared to other operators in this increasingly crowded space.

Before plunging into that detail there are a couple of general points that emerge from looking at several aggregator websites: 

–  The word ‘partner’ occurs often without a full explanation of what the relationship is or what due diligence has been done to ensure quality or appropriateness.  There is usually even less   insight into the nature of the commercial relationship with their partners and the ways that this might skew presentation of information.    

An example of that the Studyportals Bachelorportal top level search* produced 839   courses on the ‘Our Picks’ list.  The first 10 were the University of Lincoln and the first 253 were flagged as ‘Featured’.  The site says, “the university partners with us for this programme to reach students like you”.  Studyportals have confirmed that being featured represents ‘paid exposure services’ for the universities in question.

It is common for internet search engines to tell the user which results are adverts.  But when an aggregator lists ‘Our Picks’ it might be taken to imply that they take some responsibility (other than being paid) for the selection.  While Studyportals gives details about its organizational partners and its student partners it does not do so about university partners.       

–   There are many claims intended to satisfy students about the choice the site offers and the lure of counselling about those options. For example, ApplyBoard claims to have “built partnerships with over 1,500 primary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institutions, and work with 5,000+ recruitment partners”.  It’s difficult to know the breakdown of these and the website gives no indication of how many universities in each of the four countries  – Canada, USA, UK and Australia – can be searched on the site.

Using the ApplyBoard Quick Search and asking a broad query to study Business in the United Kingdom offered 10,000+ programs in 100+ “schools”.  My count was of only 70 institutions named with the 100 being achieved through branch campuses – including the most, eight, from University of Law.  At least 40 of the 100+ links led to pathway operations from Study Group, Kaplan, INTO, Navitas or CEG.

With over 140 degree bearing institutions in the United Kingdom it seems arguable that ApplyBoard is some way short of offering a critical mass of choice for students using the service. One of the arguments levelled against student recruitment agents has been that their choice is restricted to institutions who they have commercial terms with.  The strength of this may be that they usually have the benefit of familiarization trips and visits from university or pathway staff to enhance the advice they give students.  The extent to which an aggregator offers counselling         advice based on direct personal knowledge of an institution may be an area for development.      

To an extent none of that would matter if the much-vaunted machine learning, artificial intelligence and algorithms were providing good matching between the student and the university.  A student would put their information into the system and it would throw out carefully calibrated responses that reflected the student’s personal needs as well as their academic capability.  Testing across the aggregators is complex and cannot be consistent because search terms are rarely the same but a look at Apply Board and Studyportals gives some indication of what the student experience looks like.  The analysis took place between 8 and 11 May.

Apply Board

Even for a native English speaker the process is tough to navigate so I decided to go with being a US citizen who had studied in the UK to A-level.  After my experiment with a top-level query (discussed above) I filled out both the eligibility and school filters on the page to give a more precise search for a UK university**.  It provided 1000+ programs at 45 schools but the results were less than inspiring.

As I wanted to go direct to a university BA degree programme it was unhelpful to find the Relevance list populating only with pathway operations or foundation courses offered by a university through another route. The top option on the list was “2-Semester Pathway – International Year One in Business and Management – Bachelor of Science – Business and Management (Year in Business)” at Royal Holloway’s International Study Centre run by Study Group.  This suggests that the algorithm does its best but may not always reflect what students are searching for.

When I tried to view the list by the “school rank” option I presumed it would be indicative of university rankings although there was no source indicated.  Given this expectation it was surprising to find the universities of Manchester, Durham and Lancaster further down the list than Anglia Ruskin University.  There would be merit in clarifying what the ranking system is and also, what the progression rate to the university is if a pathway option is shown. 

When I entered the same search terms for study in Canada (changing my visa status to Canadian Study Permit or Visitor Visa and the duration to a four-year bachelors) I got 25 schools and 139 programs with direct entry options at universities at the top.  Presumably, this reflects the lower number of pathway operations in Canada or the strength of ApplyBoard connections in the country.  

For the USA (visa status F1 and as a UK national) it was 91 schools and 1000+ programs but with INTO’s Undergraduate Pathway at George Mason University at the top and their two-semester business pathway at Suffolk University third on the list.  Digging further down the list it became clear that the pathway operations were featured relatively heavily rather than the ‘direct admission’ I had searched for.  This, couple with the UK experience, might suggest that pathway operators are early investors in the aggregator model in countries where they have a foothold. 

Studyportals

The recent linking of Studyportals with Times Higher Education Student is one of the most apparent signs of league table compilers looking for ways to exercise their aggregator power over student interest.  Studyportals pages currently appears to favour the QS World University Rankings as a yardstick for university ranking and it will be interesting to see if the allegiance shifts.  It’s the sort of decision that reflects the impetus behind deciding what information to present to students and how transparent an aggregator is about who is paying to be represented. 

A helpful feature is the ability to adjust the information received to reflect a currency of your choice and also the actual rate being charged for your nationality. This is particularly important for EU students who, in 2021, will be charged Home tuition fees by some UK universities rather than international fee rates. This is available on the home page but it might be better if elevated to make this more apparent – I totally missed it in my original analysis.3   

I signed up and completed most of my profile in the Mastersportal*** (there is some personal information I preferred not to share).  When I looked at the ‘Recommended for You’ section of my profile I was offered 18 programmes of which all 10 in the UK were through online delivery.  This seemed to ignore my stated preference for on campus study. 

There was no explanation of how these had been selected or favoured but three were from Nottingham Trent University.  So, I returned to the main Masters portal to search for Business and Management at the top level and found that Nottingham Trent University was a ‘featured’ university.  When I searched at this level with ‘on campus learning’ enabled the online NTU options disappeared.

Some Thoughts

The mystery shopping was not comprehensive or even exhaustive but serves to highlight some of the issues that emerge in a complex and dynamic sector where nuance can mean a lot.  My insights are likely to be better informed than a non-native English-speaking student encountering the systems for the first time and the world of HE as a newcomer.  My contention would be that the limitations of the systems and their biases could be made clearer to users.

On the upside, both sites were relatively easy to use and the links to information about the universities were generally well managed.  I did not research aspects of the service that students pay for and it is possible that these would remedy some of the points I have highlighted.  The volume of information on the sites is overwhelming and there would seem to be scope for agents to offer a service that moderates the information on behalf of students.

The sector is becoming familiar with operators showing quotes and testimonials from students who have done well through using the sites but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the volumes looking at them.  It might be more interesting to know the extent to which they are mystery shopping their own sites (rather than drinking their own bathwater) with non-native English speakers.  Students who have succeeded are a much more forgiving audience than those who did not make it through the system.

The march of the aggregators will not be disrupted and probably does bring benefits in offering greater accessibility to students.  But the potential to overclaim coverage, distort perceptions of quality and act as a limiter of student choice rather than an enabler is obvious.  As this part of the sector matures it is to be hoped that, as with recruitment agents, the best operators prevail and become the choice of most potential students.        

It is also to be hoped that universities recognise that they have responsibilities when lending their brand names to third parties and that their very presence as part of an aggregator portfolio lends credibility to the entire endeavour.  They may prefer the word ‘featured’ to something like ‘promoted’ or ‘advertised’ but they should accept that honesty and integrity in the way they are represented is their decision rather than that of the aggregator.  For universities in the United Kingdom the option of making UCAS a wholly-owned, comprehensive and managed service for students remains an option that could become an exemplar of responsible self-regulation.

NOTES       

1.            As with all my blogs I am happy to have authoritative comment on the outcomes and where these add value or correct a clear error will reflect any resulting changes.  The purpose of doing the work and writing it up is to try and improve things for students while making observations that colleagues in the sector might consider.    

 2.           Search Terms Used

*Business and management in the UK, 3-year, full-time on campus, Bachelor of Arts. 

**US Citizen, educated to high school level in the UK with B/C GCE A-level grades, with a Tier 4 UK student visa and 9 IELTS in all categories.  I confirmed my interest was direct admission to UK universities for a three-year bachelors in business, management or economics starting between August and November 2021.  I placed no constraints on tuition, living costs or admission fee.

***UK citizen resident in the US.  Interested in Masters level study in Business and Management in the UK starting in between 6 months and one year.  Preference for attendance on campus.  Tuition fee and living cost budget set at 150,000 (so not a barrier). Bachelor’s degree in Business and Management securing a 2:1. With 5 years of work experience.  Native speaker English level.

3. In the original of this piece it was indicated that rates on the Portal were quoted in Euros and showed international rates and that this might have particular implications for EU students looking to study in the UK (where some institutions have chosen to offer EU students lower tuition fees than other international students in 2021). This has been removed to recognize that at the base of the home page of the Portal you are able to adjust your results to reflect the actual rate being charged and can do so in a denomination of your choice. If this information is put into your individual account it is also adjusted.

Image by Hier und jetzt endet leider meine Reise auf Pixabay aber from Pixabay

LEAGUE TABLE CLICK-BAIT COMPLICATION FOR UNIVERSITIES

It is standard to hear a manager in the English Premier League say “the table doesn’t lie” as they bemoan their lowly position or celebrate their success.  By contrast it has been equally standard to hear university recruiters put the case that various league tables are wanting in terms of nuance, specificity or even veracity.  But it may become even more complicated if university league table compilers have a direct, commercial interest in the outcome of the table and its impact on students.

In a recent article in The PIE, the Chief Development Officer of Times Higher Education (THE) outlined plans for millions of international students who consult its rankings website each year.  He said, “We want to stay top of the funnel and maximise the number of students coming to the site. What we will then do is identify a network of complementary, trusted partners that we will send those students to.”  The potential for universities to find themselves excluded or obliged to pay large sums for access seem obvious.

Regulators, governments and the sector’s networking bodies would do well to consider whether this manipulation of the recruitment process through commercially driven league tables is in the interests of the institutions and the students.  Back in October 2018 the Office for Students Director of External Relations wrote of the “challenge for policymakers….providing information responsibly and well as accessibly” but it is difficult to see any action to head off the private sector. Allowing brands that have been built with substantial public funding to be used as click-bait providing a return to private money certainly does not seem the best way forward.

Selective, Subjective and Subject to Manipulation

It is equally troubling to think that students may find themselves railroaded into choices by an organization that decides how the league table is compiled and has commercial partners who may have more than a passing interest in the result.  Elsevier have quoted Lydia Snover, director of institutional research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as saying, “every ranking is based on the available, comparable data, and is built on the subjective judgement (over indicators and weightings) of its compilers.”.  Even when league tables are independently audited, consulted upon and done with good intentions they are about choices. 

UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education has suggested that “universities with frequent QS-related contracts experienced much greater upward mobility in both overall rankings and in faculty-student ratio scores over five years in the QS World Rankings”. HEPI’s president, Bahram Bekhradnia, did not find this a surprise and noted, “QS is a commercial organisation. They’re there to make money and their rankings are not objective.”  The higher education sector, while complicit in working with rankings media, is aware that this is a double-edged sword, and it may be that commercial imperative is sharpening one side. 

Those factors are made worse by the documented cases of universities deliberately manipulating the data they submit in order to secure a place higher up the ranking.  A University World News article in 2019 highlighted how the University of Oklahoma had been supplying US News and World Report rankings with incorrect information for nearly two decades.  Occasional errors seem forgivable but the more complex and wide ranging the tables the more scope there would seem to be for manipulation.

Legitimization and Lost Perspective

It seems a long time ago that in the late 1990s a few national UK newspapers would produce university league tables once a year as part of their wider agenda of news coverage.  But since the early 2000s league table compilation and publication has become increasingly central to the activity and business model of some HE sector-oriented media organisations.  Universities have played their own part in legitimizing the ranking races that may undermine their reputation and their ability to compete for students.

Many university planning offices have also spent hundreds of hours analysing league table performance and working to advise their senior colleagues on the levers that can elevate the institution’s position.  It would be difficult to believe any Vice Chancellor who says their university’s league table performance is not considered in strategic discussions.  League tables have become silent and increasingly oppressive enforcers influencing decision making, reputations and student experience.

It is certainly plausible that one of the factors influencing grade inflation at UK universities has been the weighting of a ‘good degree’ in the league tables.  When one university sees a perceived competitor getting league table marks for awarding a higher proportion of ‘good degrees’ the argument to amend marking criteria can be positioned as not disadvantaging students.  Almost without realising it institutions and academics may find their autonomy compromised by external factors.

Methodology, Misalignment and Misunderstanding

Over and above that, the dizzying array of league tables has become a way for compilers to open new routes for advertising income and securing influence.  Universities under 50 years old may welcome the chance to trumpet their performance against similar institutions and it allows the sector to applaud its own achievements.  But when high placings are used as advertising and marketing fodder to attract students the institutions are validating a process which is almost entirely out of their control and where interests may not be aligned. 

In 2004 the Times Higher Education (THE) began its University World Rankings but that has now been joined by 18 other main categories including World Reputation Rankings, Young University Rankings, Emerging Economy Rankings, Subject and Teaching Rankings.  The latest addition of Impact Ranking assesses universities against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The accompanying launch events, announcements and conferences drive substantial content, which may be the purpose of media organizations but that is not the same as the purpose of universities.

The QS Rankings also began in 2004 and now covers 11 main categories, with several similar to THE but some noticeable differences such as Employability and System Strength.  They have built a student-facing event series – the QS World Tours – to bring students together with admissions directors at events.  Conferences and consultancy services also build out of the rankings as a source of revenue.

The variability of methodology that universities are trying to deal with shows in the league table results.  The THE and QS most recent “top 10 global universities” and “top 10 under 50 years old” show seven as being the same in each category but three different.  It’s a discrepancy which seems unhelpful if you are a student really wanting to know which were the best of breed in either category.

So, even when compilers are gauging similar categories they are making subjective choices about what to include, how to weight it and whether it will be important to their readers.  But in what is largely a game of statistical musical chairs there is some evidence that there are also fundamental misunderstandings about what is driving the performance of institutions.  Research by QS has suggested, for example, that students believe that a university’s ranking is substantially linked to employability of graduates when this only makes up a small element of the overall score.

It seems indisputable that league tables have become very big business for organizations that compile them and are influential enough to be a source of power over university decision making.  The prospect of them being leveraged to influence student choice and the recruitment potential of institutions has been made clear.  An informed, open discussion leading to collective action by the sector would be a step towards restoring balance. 

Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

Divergent EU Enrollments Create Opportunity and Risk

My recent blog on the significant underlying shifts in recruitment from China and India provoked some interest in what might be happening in other markets.  Generally speaking, the traditional international student markets are too small to move the needle in quite the same way as the big two.  But the main European Union (EU) markets throw up some interesting trends.

It shows what is at stake for some UK universities, particularly financially, if they begin to lose students from countries where they have made substantial gains in recent years.  This may be, at least in part, an explanation for some of the decisions being taken to discriminate in favour of EU students against other international students by allowing them to continue with home student fees.  It will be interesting to see if there is a legal challenge to this activity or whether such arrangements move from transitional to permanent after 2021.

According to HESA data, Poland, Romania, Portugal and Spain have shown the largest growth in enrollments from EU countries over the past five years.  Numbers from Germany, Ireland and Cyprus have been in decline over that period while Italy and France have seen growing numbers at a lower level.  The January 2021 UCAS data shows a 40% year on year decrease in EU undergraduate applications for entry in Autumn 2021 which is largely driven by the reality of most universities charging them international fees.

TABLE 1: Total Enrollments – Largest Growth Countries    

Source: HESA

But as Table 2 shows the overall numbers do not reflect the pattern of growth from each country with Spain, while remaining the top overall sender of the four, seeing its year-on-year growth rate decline for each of the past four years.  Poland has also seen its growth slowing each year during the same period.  Portugal has grown most strongly for the past three years and Romania has had robust growth for the past two reported cycles.  

TABLE 2: Year on Year Increase in Enrollments – Largest Growth Countries

Source: HESA

The most interesting thing is where the growth has occurred.  Total UK enrollments from Romania grew by 2025 students between 2017/18 and 2019/20 with 76% of the increase going to the universities of Bedfordshire and Suffolk.  It is worth noting that in both universities the overwhelming majority of enrolled Romanian students are full-time, undergraduates which brings significant benefits in terms of stability and income. 

Over the five years Bedfordshire’s enrollment of home students has declined by 600 while EU numbers have increased by 1330.  European enrollments have meant that the university’s tuition fee income from combined home and EU students rose by £20m (27%) between 2018 and 2020.  It is a major achievement for a university ranked 123rd of 130 by the Complete University Guide in 2021.

TABLE 3 – Enrollments from Romania – UK Total and Top Two Universities

Source: HESA

A similar but less extreme situation occurs with enrollments from Portugal where Coventry and Anglia Ruskin have taken 35% of additional enrollments in the past two years.

TABLE 4 – Enrollments from Portugal – UK Total and Top Two Universities

Source: HESA

Enrollments from Poland, where total growth has been declining for each of the past four reported cycles shows a less distinct pattern.  Taken over five years, Coventry and De Montfort have grown their Polish contingent more rapidly than any other universities.  Their combined share of the growth both over the full period and in the last two years is around 23%.

TABLE 5 – Enrollments from Poland – UK Total and Top Two Universities

Source: HESA

Enrollments from Spain appear to be much more evenly distributed with well-ranked universities being to the fore but notable exceptions are Anglia Ruskin and University College Birmingham over the five-year period.  No university in the UK has lost more than 50 students in their enrolled numbers of Spanish students in that time despite the slowing growth.

TABLE 6 – Growth in Enrollments from Spain – Top Ten Universities

 Enrollment 2019/20Increase 2015/16 to 2019/20
Anglia Ruskin240190
Warwick285165
Edinburgh360150
Sussex200130
Manchester325125
University College Birmingham140110
King’s College London340110
UCL375110
Imperial420105
Lancaster225105

Source: HESA

The impact of growth from European Union countries may well be a driver of decisions to continue to offer favourable terms to EU students over other international students in 2021.  However, it seems short-sighted and even counter-productive financially to offer blanket discounts if the main sending markets are limited to one or two countries.  Over the longer term it seems inevitable that less economically advantaged areas of Europe will continue to see advantageous tuition fee discounts if UK universities want to maintain enrollments.

Another factor that may be worthy of consideration is that changes to post-work study visas may  prove attractive to some European Union students even after Brexit.  Portugal and Romania remain below the European average in terms of GDP while Poland and Spain are above it and the opportunity to find work in the UK may continue to support growth.  But we may also have to place that potential against rising unemployment for 16-24 year old’s in the UK (up to 14.3% in February 2021 compared to 11.3% in February 2020) and the economic uncertainties post-Brexit and post-pandemic in summer of 2021.

It seems likely that the story of recruitment from the European Union has several more cycles to play out.  With rising numbers of 18-year-olds in the UK the political nuances of allowing EU students to take places at the same fee as home students while not expanding provision for home students may also bring rising tensions.  There are no easy choices here.

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INDIA OVERTAKING CHINA AS KEY STUDENT MARKET MAY BE A GAME CHANGER FOR LOWER RANKED UNIVERSITIES

A year ago seems an age away but in January 2020 I was speculating about how the surge of student mobility from India might change the UK higher education sector in terms of demographics and financial benefit.  At that point I described the HESA data as ‘tantalising’ but with the 2019/20 enrollment data available by country and university it’s clear that things have moved quickly.  And there may also be lessons for US universities to consider as they ponder their post-pandemic international recruitment strategies.

The top line numbers from HESA DATA show that the total number of Indian students enrolled in UK higher education grew by 27960 (101.7%) between 2018/19 and 2019/20 compared to a growth of 20,790 (17.2%) for Chinese students.  For each country the growth in the number of undergraduates year on year was around 8,000 but India had an additional 19,000+ enrolled graduates year on year compared to around 12,000 for China.  It is the first sign of a new order for markets of origin with India sending over 5,000 more first year students than China in 2019.

More importantly, the distribution of Indian students by type of institution has proved to be significantly different to that of Chinese students.  One way to illustrate this is a comparison between the universities that saw the biggest year on year growth in each. It is striking that all of the universities with the greatest increase in the number of Chinese students are in the Russell Group but none of those with the most significant increases in Indian students are in the Group.

TABLE 1: Top Ten overall increases for Chinese and Indian Enrollments between 2018/19 and 2019/20

 Change in total enrolled Chinese student yoy from 2018/19 to 2019/20Change in total enrolled Indian students yoy from 2018/19 to 2019/20
Edinburgh141050
East London-151710
Leeds123545
Bedfordshire301595
Southampton1190-10
Hertfordshire-1351575
Sheffield115015
Northumbria901510
UCL106525
Kingston1601265
Manchester88575
Ulster-151230
Birmingham86010
Central Lancashire-1051180
Newcastle85550
Middlesex-110915
Kings College72550
Greenwich-185840
Nottingham72530
Coventry-85810
Note: To maintain consistency private and specialist universities excluded from table.  Of the private universities BPP registered a year on year growth of 1640 from India but a fall of 95 from China.  The London based University of the Arts showed a year on year growth of 790 from China and an additional 70 from India.

Source: HESA

Digging deeper indicates that location is not the main driver of these vastly differentiated enrollment patterns.  The situation for several cities with two main universities is shown below.  Manchester Metropolitan shows relatively balanced numbers but they are small changes and the differential is swamped by the University of Manchester’s growth in Chinese students.

TABLE 2: Selected cities showing change in university enrollments year on year

 China – student change yoyIndia – student change yoy
Birmingham86075
Birmingham City50800
Nottingham72550
Nottingham Trent-150270
Manchester88525
Manchester Metropolitan5070
Sheffield1150-10
Sheffield Hallam-135185

Source: HESA

What becomes clear is that lower ranked universities are securing a significantly greater proportion of the growth in Indian students.  This supports the notion that the changing importance of the two main source markets could have a major impact on the financial strength in different parts of the sector.  But the underlying drivers of the recruitment patterns are less obvious.      

It is likely that lower ranked universities represent better value for money in terms of fees, accommodation and other costs of study which is likely to be particularly attractive to self-funding students.  There is also a propensity for lower ranked universities to make offers at lower grades which means a less competitive route to selection and enrollment.  Several are located in areas that the UK census has shown have strong communities with contacts in India but that would not explain the differences within cities that have two universities.

The differences in performance are very striking and it raises a number of questions about the longer- term strategy of universities that are not currently recruiting heavily from the Indian market.  It seems possible that as numbers from China stabilise or even go into decline there will be greater competition for the growing numbers from India.  It is probably best for lower-ranked universities to make the most of this moment in the sun but if they have the opportunity to develop a solid local community and optimise their contacts with alumni the impact may be long lasting.

More troubling for some universities might be their failure to recruit strongly from either of these major markets in 2019/20.  There are some well-known names and reasonably ranked institutions that seem to be suffering as the big city Russell Group universities excel in recruiting students from China but who do not appear attractive to students from India.  It is interesting but seems counter intuitive that the two with the greatest loss from China year on year are partnered with pathway operators with traditional strengths in the country.

TABLE 3: Universities with the largest year on year loss of students from China (2018-19 to 2019-20)

UniversityChina – year on year change in total enrollmentsIndia – year on year change in total enrollments
Sussex– 34010
East Anglia– 26040
Hull– 2005
NOTE: I’d like to commend the University of Hull for their experiment in charging postgraduates starting in 2021 the same as Home students. It will be interesting to see how it works out.

 Source: HESA

As noted the University of Hull has embarked on an aggressive marketing ploy to charge postgraduate students the same fee as home students in 2021. As far as I am aware this is unique in the UK higher education system and it will be interesting to see how it works out. It’s certainly better than those universities that will continue to discriminate in favour of all European Union students who are now deemed international but are being allowed home student rates.

For UK universities there is unlikely to be any Government opposition to the growing numbers although experience shows it’s always possible for U-turns in policy.  As recently as 4 March, 2021, Minister for Future Borders and Immigration Kevin Foster said, “As we rebuild from the global pandemic we want the world’s brightest talent, who aspire to a career at the highest levels of business, science, the arts and technology to see our United Kingdom as the natural place to fulfil their aspirations.   The changes announced today will ensure once they have received a gold standard qualification from one of our world leading education institutions they can easily secure the status they need to continue living, working and fulfilling their dreams in the UK.”

It sounds great news for recruitment but I am reminded of a Government statement with the words, “We want high quality international students to come here. We want them to study at genuine institutions, whose primary purpose is providing a first class education. And we want the best of them – and only the best of them – to stay on and work here after their studies are complete.” This statement was made by then Home Secretary, The Rt Hon Theresa May, in 2011, shortly before the UK post-study work visa was removed.  It would probably only take an economic setback and rising numbers of unemployed graduates to see post-study work for international students being viewed less favourably by a Government that is still posturing about border control.

For US universities keen to make the most of revitalized interest from international students it is worth considering how recent research from IDP might dictate their engagement and offer strategy.  A survey of more than 800 prospective international students in more than 40 countries who are interested in studying in the US – with more than half of respondents based in India – found that more than three quarters (76%) have improved perceptions of the US since the 2020 presidential election, with 67% stating they are now more likely to study there.  What is clear from the UK experience is that the opportunity to recruit from India is available to almost all institutions if they can get the fundamentals right.

Critically, the emerging facts from the UK suggest that value in the cost of study is likely to be as significant a driver of interest as rankings.  Post study work is an important outcome but students, particularly those that are self-financing, will be equally interested in being able to minimize their outgoings during the course.  Making appropriate adjustments and moving decisively to work in market with a compelling message will be vital for institutions wanting to maximise international enrollments post-pandemic.

Un-civil War for UK Universities If Welsh Break Ranks on EU Fees?

A tweet from Chris Marshall, Head of Policy and Strategy, at Swansea University on 6 January suggested that the first shots may have been fired in the battle to lure EU students to Wales when their fee status changes to ‘international’ later in 2021.  The sub-text and purported THE headline is that the “Move sets Wales apart from rest of UK post-Brexit”.  It implies that the Welsh Government is legislating, or planning to legislate, to mandate differential fee treatment for EU students attending Welsh universities which would probably provide legal protection from the anti-discrimination principles of the Equality Act 2010.

Just a word of caution.  The link to the timeshighereducation.com source lead me to a page that read You don’t have permission to access this page.and a search of the THE web-pages does not find the article. It seems possible that someone jumped the gun, that the website has not updated or that the story, for some reason, never appeared.

If the Welsh Government does legislate in a way that gives legal cover for EU students being charged the same fee rate as Home students it may be the starting gun in a race to level the playing field in the UK.  Those with long memories in UK higher education will recall the period when the post-study work rules in Scotland were more benevolent and seen as a boon for international student recruitment north of the Border.  There seems little doubt that legislators in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland would come under pressure to allow the same benefit if Wales makes a break.

It would probably be a relief for Swansea University who management of their current preferential treatment of EU students seem a bit convoluted. The main fees page states, “Your Tuition Fees will be chaged (sic) at the same rate as International students” but the Undergraduate Scholarships page tells us there will be an “automatic discount to tuition fees for EU students that join us in the academic year 2021/22 and will reduce the fees to the same level as UK tuition fees”. Perhaps this is just an attempt to spare the feelings of other international students who will be paying £5,550 a year more for a course in, say, Business Law, LLB (Hons). 

Another version of the preferential pricing is seen at Bangor University which has a £5,000 EU student scholarship for EU undergraduate students in 2021/22 – with the spin that £2,500 is off fees and £2,500 is off university accommodation. The difference between the International fee for a BA in Business Studies and the Home fee is £6,000 so it nearly makes up the difference. Maybe there is a hope that having a ‘scholarship’ split between fee and accommodation is a way of defending a legal challenge on discriminatory pricing?

There may well be other variations on these themes but the trend for many universities reviewed in England and Wales appears to be to proclaim on the international fees page that EU students will be subject to international fees from 2021/22. The underlying blanket sweetener, discount, scholarship or bursary for students from 27 European countries is offered discretely, some might also say discreetly, on a separate page. It all seems less than transparent and might suggest that there are deliberate attempts to keep the preferential treatment of students from Europe under the radar.

Checking the Government Position

In a written statement from Kirsty Williams, the Minister of Education for the Welsh Government, on 10 August 2020 said that EU students ‘will not be eligible for support or, in the case of higher education courses, home fee status’ after 1 August 2021. A search of the Welsh Government pages shows a new statement on the fee situation (6 January, 2020) which says ‘the Welsh Government will provide support to EU, EEA and Swiss nationals who benefit from citizens’ rights under the various withdrawal agreements.’ 

The European Union statement on Citizens’ Rights under the Withdrawal Agreement says that ‘The Withdrawal Agreement protects those EU citizens lawfully residing in the United Kingdom, and UK nationals lawfully residing in one of the 27 EU Member States at the end of the transition period.’  This does not, however, include EU students who are resident in the EU.

The ‘citizens’ rights’ question relating to fees was also answered by Michele Donelan in October 2020 when she indicated that “current EU principles of equal treatment will continue to apply for those covered by the citizens’ rights provisions in the Withdrawal Agreement”.  It is difficult to see that the Welsh statement makes allowances for a significantly wider group than has already been accounted for in England.  The devil, as always, is in the detail and the intentions of Governments are not always clear so I would be very happy to have authoritative guidance on the issue and whether the statement from the Welsh Government makes a material difference. 

Legal, Moral or Ethical?    

A material change in legislation would, of course, save the blushes of English universities currently planning to discriminate in favour of EU students against other international students.  But it would not save the moral dilemma of advantaging students from Europe over those from Asia, Africa and the Americas.  Neither would it satisfactorily respond to international students who have long held the view that they are exploited by universities to subsidize home students.

What the THE did write about on 6 January was that UK universities were ‘‘weighing options’ on EU Student Fee Discounts”.  In the article Smita Jamdar, head of education at Shakespeare Martineau, suggests that “in my mind there’s a question over whether ‘EU national’ really is a nationality-based discrimination”.  There is also a suggestion that transitional arrangements could be considered a proportionate response to the changing situation for EU students.

It’s all interesting stuff that will play out over the coming year but thus far the vast majority of universities have decided to charge EU students international fees for 2021/22.  When a university chooses to significantly increase the price of a course from year to year there are not usually ‘transitional arrangements’ for new students.  It is also difficult to argue that EU students have not had fair warning of their likely change of status given the Government’s General Election promise to complete Brexit.   

It really is about time that the organizations with an interest in students – Office for Students, National Union of Students, UKCISA and others – got to grips with the situation.  Clarity would be a very good thing but so would some considered responses on how differential pricing is equitable even as a transition measure.  At the very least, universities might be challenged to indicate the timetable for any transition rather than allowing a systemic, divisive and discriminatory system by default.

Image by David Peterson from Pixabay